


The Opposite of Spooky

by Sintina



Series: Unfinished Business [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Banter, Bickering, Demisexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Demisexual Crowley (Good Omens), Diary/Journal, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Ghosts as a Metaphor, Haunted Houses, I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost (Ghostbusters), Movie Night, Multi, Paranormal, Queer Themes, Road Trips, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Talking, The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens), The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens), Traveling as a couple, world tour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25701022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sintina/pseuds/Sintina
Summary: ON HIATUS,AND ALSO ON ITS WAY BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!Revamped from a mostly Halloween seasonal story to a sort of 'Talking Our Way Through The Various Human Holidays' affair. ♡♡♡Stay tuned.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Unfinished Business [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628956
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	The Opposite of Spooky

**Author's Note:**

> _"I never say things like 'this feels spooky,'" said Crowley. "I'm all for spooky."_ \- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett _Good Omens_ book.  
> "Big spooky fan, me," - Crowley _Good Omens_ TV show. 
> 
> There are commissioned illustrations in the works for this adventure!! Coming soon!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharing favorite movies with your partner is an integral part of building intimacy nowadays. I don’t make the rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this silliness! They’ll head out on their first haunted adventure next chapter.

“Don’t come in here!” Aziraphale greets Crowley from the direction of Crowley’s own bedroom. Well, that’s interesting.

“Hello to you too!” Crowley calls while he kicks his door shut. Crowley deposits the Tesco purchases—a trip Aziraphale insisted he make almost as soon as Crowley was vertical—in the kitchen. He ambles down the hall, trying to give the angel plenty of time. He leans against the wall and stares at the bedroom door. He can't see through it, for a start, the glass is gone. Never had hinges before, either, used to be one of those grand sliding numbers. Whatever this turns out to be, it can’t be worth the insult of brass fixtures.

“Why’d you change my door, angel?” Crowley asks the hinges directly, glaring at them.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale grouses as he bumps into something. Crowley can hear him readjusting whatever it was and huffing at it for good measure. “Perhaps I thought you might barge in and spoil your surprise.”

“Considering it.” Crowley tries the knob— also brass, sticking out like a tongue from the clean, dark lines of his hallway. “Locked?” Crowley grunts and leans against the opposite wall. “Lots of ways a guy could interpret being locked out of his own bedroom, angel.”

“Good thing you’re not a guy,” Aziraphale quips and Crowley can hear the bastardly smirk.

“You’ve got two minutes before I change my door back.”

“How generous.”

Crowley smiles and flicks his forked tongue out to test the air for clues. He smells coffee and pastries, first, then he smells Aziraphale. He closes his eyes, everything in his flat has a whiff of Aziraphale these days and sometimes it does a body good to lean back and savor it. Helps to kill one of the two minutes before Crowley disappears that ugly excuse for a door.

He opens his eyes when he hears Aziraphale chuckle inside the room. Whatever he’s doing, the angel is clearly proud of himself. Crowley better be prepared to love this, even if he hates it.

“Thank you for your patience dearest, but I can feel you staring a hole through the wall.” Aziraphale miracles the door back to its usual modern grandeur and it slides open in relief.

The room is much the same, nothing out of the way to distract Crowley’s attention from the bed. He gasps and swallows, his throat dry and slow to move. Crowley needs to school his delighted face into mild curiosity before looking over to see Aziraphale. The angel is sitting on his knees near the foot of the bed, expectant like a puppy wagging his tail.

There is a sheet—a white sheet, mind you, so it’s not one of Crowley’s—hovering above his bed. Not any normal sort of hovering, like a sheet might do in Crowley’s flat to air itself out or get de-wrinkled in a hurry. No, this sheet is hovering in the shape of a person wearing a sheet. And there are eye holes like bottomless pools of emptiness. Nice touch.

“Achem,” Crowley clears his throat. “Afternoon, angel,” he greets and takes some steps toward the ghostly centerpiece. He gestures at it with a rotating wrist. “What’s all this then?”

Aziraphale grins proudly, but his hands are twisting Crowley’s black silk sheets at either side of his knees, worrying and bunching the fabric. He nods at the haunted sheet by his side. Obediently, it lifts, slowly, rather spookily—Crowley will give him that—away from the center of the bed. A pile of DVDs and VHS tapes is revealed to be stacked beneath its folds. The ‘ghost,’ with its empty eyes staring uncannily down at Crowley, hovers backward, trailing over to the edge of the bed, before collapsing as though the being inside it simply disappeared, and falling to the floor.

Crowley takes off his glasses. He blinks at the stack of movies, half of them in formats no longer supported by modern technology. A VHS copy of the movie _Ghost_ sits on top. He swallows. Crowley’s face must be grimacing in discomfort while he struggles with his indomitable vocal chords, because Aziraphale starts babbling.

“You know I haven’t seen many films, but I remember the ones you’ve mentioned over the years. You’ve seen all of these, I believe?”

“Angel. This is.” Crowley gives himself an internal shake and tries again. “Yes, these’re my, erm, favorites. Actually. Is this a, um—?”

“It’s not what you asked for, _yet._ You see, of course we’ll still go to the…”

Crowley finds that he _very much feels things,_ so, he avoids saying them out loud and instead runs his hand through the air over the movies on the bed. Crowley feels a distinct lack of angelic miracle essence.

“Angel, there’s no,” he wonders aloud and waggles his fingers to imitate magic. “How’d you find all these?”

“Well, my dear, it turns out searching for old films is not so dissimilar from hunting for old books,” Aziraphale sits up straighter, less fidgety. “It was actually a rather fun adventure these last few days.” He reaches for one of them, as though he’s about to tell the blessed story of every step in his acquisition. Crowley stares. Aziraphale has gone antique hunting, the human way, for Crowley’s favorite movies.

“Aziraphale.” Crowley draws the angel's attention by using his full name. Aziraphale looks at him, concern returning to his eyes. Crowley rolls his tongue around his teeth and then chews on his lip as preamble for saying the truth. “This is the first gift you’ve ever given me.”

“That’s not...” Aziraphale stammers. “That can’t be true! You’ve given me so many things,” Aziraphale casts around the room, before apparently recognizing that they are not in the bookshop, a place littered with tokens of appreciation bestowed by Crowley over the centuries. They are in Crowley’s sparse bedroom, in his flat devoid of any mementos except those which he purloined himself as reminders of momentous occasions with his angel. “Well.” Aziraphale tries to recover. “Certainly all the meals and alcohol count, all the nights of entertainment?”

“Not a consumable, angel. And I know you never thought of any of those meals and things as _gifts_. Treating me, sure. But not gifting.”

Aziraphale stares. He blinks and looks as though he may argue or defend himself. Then his brow drops into its stance of self-deprecation. His chin swivels before he erupts. “Oh, my dear! I’m so sorry! I simply can’t believe myself. How could I never have gifted you anything!?” His face is doing that pink-to-red thing where he’s building up to a full-on state.

“Argh.” Crowley gets a knee up on the bed, leaning towards Aziraphale, waving his hand like he might swipe away the emotions. “Don’t get verklempt on me. No water works, I mean it!” As Aziraphale sputters, Crowley climbs up and readjusts so he’s sitting opposite Aziraphale, the stack of movies between them. He nudges Aziraphale’s knees with both his feet, making eye contact. “You gave me your time and attention. S’all I ever wanted.” Crowley runs his fingers, caressing, over the cover of the top VHS tape. “But this. Thank you, angel.” He looks up and meets Aziraphale’s wobbly smile.

“You’re welcome, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, reverent. His voice is less teetering. The moment passes into a level of sincerity and seriousness that makes them both a touch uncomfortable, until Aziraphale pipes up. “Which shall we watch first?”

Crowley sifts through the small pile. There are four VHS tapes: _Ghost_ , the live-action _Casper_ with that girl who played Wednesday Addams, and both of the original _Ghostbusters_ films. Next are two DVDs: _A Ghost Story_ and the _Ghostbusters_ remake with the all-actress cast. He’s not sure he’s quite awake enough for this. Crowley’s mouth tastes dry and stale. “How did you, er, know my… um... why these?”

Aziraphale tugs the sheet up into his lap, both sets of fingers playing over the fabric like he’s knitting. He looks down at his hands, as if willing them to be still. Then his eyes look up at Crowley through his lashes when he speaks. “You’ve said ghost stories serve three purposes. There was: Grief counseling, or helping humans come to terms with the finite nature of their brief existence as well as reconcile the loss of loved ones. That’d be, these,” he shuffles the stack to separate _Ghost_ and _A Ghost Story_ and then looks to Crowley for confirmation. Crowley can only dumbly nod. “And. Oh! Dark comedy that laughs about the futility of it all with a dash of appreciating life in the moment,” he separates _Casper_ , and _Ghostbusters II_. Crowley would correct him about _Casper_ , but at this point, Crowley is more concerned with the state of his expensive sheets in Aziraphale’s twiddling fingers. It’s adorable and endearing and Crowley wants to stop him, but also knows Aziraphale will just fiddle with something else. “And lastly was, oh…” Aziraphale snaps his fingers and both of them wince expecting a miracle that doesn’t occur, because thankfully the angel wasn’t thinking of anything to manifest in the moment. Could have been quite awkward, that. Aziraphale looks proud of himself when he concludes, “The scientific inquiry into the metaphysical, or unseen dimension of reality in which humans believe ghosts might actually exist. What did you call it? A ‘supernatural quasi-spiritual’ endeavor?” He points to the first _Ghostbusters_ and its remake. After this speech, Aziraphale looks a bit like he’s run a marathon and his grin is somewhat lopsided with the effort.

Crowley’s jaw drops and his eyes sting. He knows his smile can only now be referred to as dopey. He could not give a single damn.

Aziraphale notices and looks more confident, grinning when he continues.

“It’s not a trip to the catacombs, which we can still do, my dear, of course, but perhaps first we could watch these together?” Aziraphale clears his throat. “Before I go on a ghostly world tour with you, I’d like to, at least, attempt to understand what appeals to you about all this haunted business.”

Crowley’s smile is squiggling around his lower face as though it’s been animated. He can feel his lips waving from side to side, struggling not to unhinge his reptilian jaw in a gaping grin which still wouldn’t be big enough to contain how stupidly happy this surprise has made him. He gives up. There’s nothing to say that won’t ruin this moment. He leans forward, burying his emotions in an embrace Aziraphale is sure to understand.

Yes, good, Aziraphale must be getting it, because he leans Crowley’s chin up for a kiss. But then he holds Crowley in place, stopping just short. Bastard. Crowley is in love with the worst kind of bastard: the one who knows exactly what he’s capable of and relishes showing off.

“That’s all very well, my dear, but I’m afraid I must insist you use your words.” Aziraphale rubs the pad of his thumb along the underside of Crowley’s jaw, from beneath his ear to his chin. Crowley clenches his teeth, refusing to speak. “Really, now,” Aziraphale tsks, close and hot. “After all our years improperly communicating…”

“Ssss” Crowley hisses at him. He flicks his tongue out so it tickles the angel’s lips. Aziraphale twitches, losing his faux crossness. Crowley smirks. Honesty’s always easier when you feel you’ve got the high ground. “Fine! I am actively feeling gratitude I can’t express any other way than by kissing you, all right? Kissing you and- and- doing considerably _more_ to you.” He squeezes Aziraphale tight around the ribs, pressing closer and toppling the arrangement of his movies.

“Oh my, how lovely,” Aziraphale approves, hugging Crowley and pulling him into his lap. “Well done, you. Very direct.”

Crowley is nothing if not responsive to praise, so he keeps dishing out the words, words, words. “Thank you, angel,” he kisses as he thanks, getting into some toothy necking now. “Thank you, thank you.”  
Aziraphale begins chuckling, so Crowley looks up at him. “Sorry, I just had a thought,” Aziraphale admits. “Should we perhaps put one of the films on, do you think? That way we can do that euphemism the humans are always using these days… the one with the television app?”

“Asking me to Netflix and chill, angel?”

“That’s the ticket!” Aziraphale beams.

Crowley hides his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder while he devolves into chuckles and shakes in Aziraphale’s strong arms. Once recovered he reaches his hands up to palm his angel’s cheeks and kisses him soundly. “I can’t watch anything with you right now,” he kisses him again, “no snogging on the couch, either.” He starts to pull at Aziraphale’s clothes and his own. “Angel, I want, I need…”  
And thank somebody Aziraphale finally gets that Crowley is having Big Feelings that must be dealt with physically. His angel lifts them both and lies them flat and allows Crowley to get on with his overwhelming appreciation.

\---------------------

> Trip Day 0: Travel Preparation with a Spooky Movie Night
> 
> All in all, I'd say the gift was rather successful. I've made the appropriate arrangements for our upcoming tours. I have only told Crowley that we'll be staying close to home and there's no need to pack just yet. Not that I can imagine him actually carrying a bag anywhere. But it's the done thing, packing prior to a long holiday. Well, this first adventure might be a bit underwhelming in comparison to what's in store. I do hope Crowley approves. I confess I shall never recover from the mortification of realizing I hadn't gifted Crowley with anything prior to today. In an effort to soothe my remorse, Crowley made a point to reference something called the 'five love languages' and said that mine simply wasn't the giving of gifts. Whatever that means. I appreciate the thought, but I shan't be making excuses for inconsiderate behavior as a partner. I must endeavor to do better over the course of our ghostly holiday travels. Oh, it seems Crowley has finished setting up his living room for our movie night to his specifications, popped corn and other sundries await! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Trip Day 1: Tower of London & Jack the Ripper Tour.


End file.
